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For my final Teach for America meeting, I had to answer the question: “What would you tell yourself two years ago?” My message to myself began with “you are stupid, ignorant, and naive.” I have come so far from my bushy-tailed college graduate self and I have learned so much that it often feels like I’ve aged 30 years over these past two.
Before I began TFA, I thought that what it took to be a good teacher was simply the belief that every child can learn. I actually laugh at myself when I write that, because every teacher starts out believing that every child can learn; that’s why they’re fucking teachers. To be a good teacher it takes grit. It takes dragging yourself out of bed and convincing yourself that you can do this each morning. Aside from my ignorance about what it actually takes to be a good teacher,…
This week had been one of those weeks. Amidst the Chicago Public Schools strike, hearing about thousands of teachers fighting for their rights, it was business as usual at my charter school. I found myself waking up at the crack of dawn, dreading what was to come. The weather dropped arguably 20 degrees overnight, it…
read more »My corps experience pretty much goes like this: work around the clock while eating, sleeping, and breathing teaching, then have a break and recollect my thoughts. Right now I’m on fall break so my thoughts seem clear and I finally have a chance to think. In doing so I have been thinking about my opinions…
read more »When I was young, I spent most of my childhood playing school. I would make up worksheets, have fake parent-teacher conferences, grade fake papers. I went above and beyond as a ten year old, literally completing a test for each imaginary kid. But that’s how I’ve always been: I didn’t do things the way people…
read more »When Teach for America speakers came up during our professional development days meant to inspire us with their uplifting stories, I would denounce what they said. I rejected the Teach for America jargon and ignored the success stories. We used to call it “drinking the kool-aid” (or still do) when someone had fallen under the…
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